I have been reading this forum for some time now and am posting for the first time. I have recently seen an analysis of Federer's forehand and would like to request maybe an analysis of Sampras' serve. I want to model my serve after his (I currently use a pinpoint stance). Can anyone give me tips, if not an analysis, of how to do this? Thanks.

If you join tennisone.com, you will be able to do frame by frame analysis of many pro swings including Sampras' serve.

Probably not what you want to hear, but after doing it myself I would suggest that you avoid duplicating Sampras' serving motion.

Here's why I gave up on it ...

The severe closed stance and extreme shoulder rotation made it difficult for me to give my swing forward momentum. Everything was going up instead of up AND forward.

The big shoulder turn also makes it easy for me to lose my timing and put my serve right into a slump. I have found that using less shoulder rotation (about perpendicular to net or a bit more) allows me to maintain better timing and makes it easier for me to keep the kinetic chain strong. If you look at Roddick's serve, you'll see that he uses less shoulder rotation than most others, but does a much better job of getting his shoulders facing the net and his arm comes whipping forward as a result.

Couple things: one, I have also recently changed from pinpoint to platform serve modeled after Sampras with rather good success, considering how short of a time I have been working. I do use less shoulder rotation. The key, I have found, is to make sure my back leg does no work beyond the first few parts of the serve. I start on my front leg, rock back on my back leg to start my motion and right when I release the ball, my weight is evenly balanced on the two legs. Then the weight comes off the back leg and it kind of gets dragged forward a little and all the stress and power is from the front leg. That is what throws my weight into the serve and thus forward and into the court as well. The key to lots of spin is to keep the racket moving slowly the whole time and don't actually put it into the "back scratch" position but rather to hold it up a little and right when you explode into the serve, whip the racket head down and around to gather great racket head speed. Here is a link to a great page I found with some videos of the Sampras serve. http://www.jericho.bc.ca/tennis/The%...uet%20Path.htm

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What would be the major difference in the use of the legs between the platform and pinpoint stance? When I try to serve using the platform stance, it seems that I do not get enough power from my legs, therefore muscling and rushing the serve.

To get more weight and leg into the shot in the platform stance you've gotta move your hip into the court. This should happen easy and naturally sometime before you start to push off, well it kinda blends with the push off which is done mostly by the front leg. Pete does it.

I use the back leg to push my body into the court, it works together with the hip/weight shift in that same direction. After that it's all front leg. Don't focus on that too much though, just feel how your hip and your body is moving into the court and then just push off. You will naturaly use your rear leg to push forward and the fron to go up at the ball. You've gotta be comfortable with what you're doing.